Flashback Friday: Nassim

Spoiler Warning: This review contains spoilers for Nassim, which closed Off Broadway on April 20th.

I didn’t know a lot about Nassim before seeing it save for one key fact—each night a different actor would play one of the two roles without ever seeing the script before. Though it is a similar concept to a previous play by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour (who is obviously the titular Nassim in the play), I never saw that play and didn’t really know what to except. Partly due to my schedule and partly due to wanting to see an actor I know and enjoy, I went to the show when Lee Pace (Angels in America, Pushing Daisies) guest starred. As much as I enjoyed Lee Pace before the show, Nassim gave me a new appreciation of the actor with this show’s blend of emotional tenderness and fun discovery. 

Nassim begins with the guest star opening a box that contains only an instruction for him to face a screen and clap. For the next period of time, the actor on stage responds to text on the screen, which we find out later is being controlled by Nassim off stage. It’s painfully funny seeing the actor reading the lines, taking the stage directions, and trying to figure out what is going on along with the rest of the audience. You quickly find out Nassim is from Iran and has performed plays all around the world but never in his mother tongue, Farsi. The play continues with Nassim not speaking, even as he comes on stage, and still communicating via text that is projected onto the screen. The guest actor begins to try and speak Farsi, and you see just how difficult it is to speak a language you don’t know. Throughout the night in moments both emotional and funny, Nassim teaches the guest actor his story and his language.

What makes Nassim so beautiful and touching is that the message it goes for is simple. We all want to belong, and we all yearn for home. The outsider feeling that Nassim expresses in his show might never be an emotion know to someone in their home country always speaking their home tongue, but we all feel like outsiders sometimes. Seeing an accomplished, talented actor struggle, albeit not as much as many might struggle, through Farsi passages and by being put on the spot reminds us that even the most talented of us are vulnerable when we’re not comfortable. It’s a small reminder to make others feel welcome because if the tables were turned, we might be the other. It’s a message that’s beautiful and vast by being so simple.

Nassim ended with Lee Pace reading a short story over the phone in Farsi to Nassim’s mother in Iran. It was a beautifully sweet moment, and everyone in the audience seemed fully enveloped in the experience. It should be noted that Nassim’s mother is a saint because time differences meant she was answering the phone around 5AM. Nassim has been performed in China, Germany, New York, and other places all around the world. I hope it continues to be performed because it gives a simple message that needs to be heard everywhere: we’re all sometimes outsiders; we all want to belong.